Introducing The De Bethune DB28 Kind Of Blue Tourbillon Meteorite

Sci-fi tourbillons have kind of become De Bethune's thing. Yeah, I wrote "sci-fi tourbillons" with zero irony and I'm sticking to it. The latest of these creations is the DB28 Kind Of Blue Tourbillon Meteorite, which uses a piece of an actual meteorite to complement the monochromatic creation. This isn't one for the faint of heart.

Sci-fi tourbillons have kind of become De Bethune's thing. Yeah, I wrote "sci-fi tourbillons" with zero irony and I'm sticking to it. The latest of these creations is the DB28 Kind Of Blue Tourbillon Meteorite, which uses a piece of an actual meteorite to complement the monochromatic creation. This isn't one for the faint of heart.

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When you first look at this watch, you'll notice something unusual. The case is blue. Like, bright blue, and it's not due to some strange PVD coating. De Bethune actually flame-blues titanium for its watches in a process similar to how most watchmakers blue screws. Here though it's been executed on basically every visible piece of metal. The result is a watch with a lot of visual impact that still feels comfortable on the wrist, especially at 42.6mm across and just 9.7mm thick.

The meteorite dial adds some color to the otherwise all-blue watch.

Sitting at the center of all of this though is a sliver of an actual meteorite. This one is taken from a meteorite that landed in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, about 5,000 years ago. In addition to being flat out cool, it adds some color to the watch with pink and purple hues that resemble the sunset or a nebula in outer space. That's furthered by the fact that small white gold stars have been added. It's so impressive that you could easily miss the very elegant tourbillon down at six o'clock.

On the other side, you have the DB2019v3 movement, which has a power reserve indicator on the reverse as well. Even the movement is bright blue, accented with the rose gold power reserve indicator and rose gold caseback. The blue and rose combo is especially nice here.

The back shows a power reserve indicator built into the movement.

This might not be a watch for everyone, but if you're into extremely technical watchmaking, the use of unusual materials, and references (literal and more poetic) to outer space, it would be hard to imagine a cooler watch than this.

The De Bethune DB28 Kind Of Blue Tourbillon Meteorite is priced at 280,000 CHF (approximately $277,200 at time of publishing) and will be officially released next week at Baselworld.